1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a semiconductor device, and particularly to a semiconductor device in which thermal equalization of elements incorporated in the semiconductor device is achieved.
2. Description of the Background Art
Conventionally, various semiconductor devices with the objective of reducing temperature difference between semiconductor chips have been proposed.
For example, Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2005-175074 describes a semiconductor device including a plurality of IGBT chips arranged in parallel. Inner IGBT chips of the aligned IGBT chips have a smaller area than the area of IGBT chips arranged at either end of the aligned IGBT chips.
Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2004-022983 describes a semiconductor device including a power semiconductor element and a heat dissipating block, and the heat dissipating block is arranged laterally to the power semiconductor element.
In a recent semiconductor chip, a plurality of types of elements, such as a power semiconductor, a diode and a terminal are mounted on a substrate. Thus, when thermal equalization of the elements is sought after, focusing on a particular type of element may result in difficulty in achieving thermal equalization in relation to other elements.
In the semiconductor device described in Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2005-175074, a focus is made only on the IGBT chips, and no focus is made on other elements. This may cause thermal equalization of the IGBT chips to fail, depending on where the terminal and the diode are arranged.
The semiconductor device described in Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2004-022983 includes the heat dissipating block arranged laterally to the power semiconductor element, however, the power semiconductor element may not be sufficiently cooled, depending on the position at which other elements mounted around the power semiconductor element and the heat dissipating block are arranged.
The present invention has been made in view of the above-described problems, and an object of the present invention is to provide a semiconductor device which includes a plurality of types of elements incorporated therein such as a power semiconductor, a diode and a terminal, and in which thermal equalization of the elements is achieved.